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ADDRESS 



/ 

HON. J! Y. JOYNER 



STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 



BEFORE THE 



NORTH CAROLINA PRESS ASSOCIATION 



MONTREAT, JULY 1, 1915 



[PUBLISHED BY REQUEST] 



TO THE EDITORS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



Dear Sir: — At the recent session of the State Press Associa- 
tion, held at Montreat, the following resolution was adopted: 

"Resolved, That we heartily indorse the Moonlight 
School movement for the elimination of adult illiteracy 
in North Carolina, and pledge the support and active aid 
of our papers to it and to the plan outlined in the address 
of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to the North 
Carolina Press Association ; and we ask Doctor Joyner 
to send a copy to every editor, with request to publish." 

In compliance with this resolution, this address has been 
printed and is sent to you. I earnestly ask your hearty coopera- 
tion in this important movement for the elimination of adult illit- 
eracy in North Carolina and trust that you will use this address 
by publication in your columns, or in any other way that your 
judgment may dictate, for the advancement of this worthy work 

in your county. 

Very truly yours, 




State Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

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ADDRESS 

OF 

HON. J. Y. JOYNER 

STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 

BEFORE THE NORTH CAROLINA PRESS ASSOCIATION AT 
MONTREAT, JULY 1, 1915 



Realizing that the press is the most potent of all agencies in mold- 
ing sentiment, in shaping public policies, and in promoting all move- 
ments for public welfare, I count it not only a pleasure and an honor, 
but a great opportunity as well, to speak to the members of the North 
Carolina Press Association. 

In my opinion, with the exception of the teachers and others ac- 
tively engaged in educational work, the editors of North Carolina 
have contributed more for less pay than any others to the educational 
progress of this State during the thirteen years of my administra- 
tion. With the exception of the public school, the public press is per- 
haps the greatest instrumentality for public education. Appreciating 
your activity and assistance in this great work in the past, I shall 
take the liberty of talking to you today informally, as to friends and 
coworkers in a great cause for the common good, about some of the 
most important parts of our educational program. 

If time permitted, I should like to discuss with you three big prob- 
lems that now hold important places on our program of educational 
work in this State : 

1. Rural Education. — Its adaptation to rural life, to the everyday 
needs of the country people that constitute 82 per cent of our popula- 
tion, preparing them to make the most and to get the most out of all 
that is about them — soil, plant, and animal, the three great sources of 
wealth — and to use what they make and get in the best ways to en- 
rich, sweeten, beautify and uplift country life socially, morally, intel- 
lectually, spiritually, making it the ideal life that men will seek aud 
love to live. The development of a type of country school by reason- 
able consolidation and local taxation, of not less than three teachers, 
adequately equipped in all respects to give such preparation, voca- 
tional and cultural, to country boys and girls, and to become the 
social, intellectual, industrial, and civic center of the whole commu- 
nity. 

We have been working on this problem for some years and we are 
beginning to have some encouraging success in the establishment in 



2 

a number of counties of farm-life schools, rural high schools, and 
consolidated rural district or community schools prepared to give 
instruction and training in rural-life subjects. You are acquainted 
with this work and have given it your hearty support in tlte past, and 
I bespeak the same in the future. 

2. More Efficient Teaching and Supervision. — Increased compensa- 
tion, increased qualification, professional preparation, and profes- 
sional protection for teachers and superintendents of schools, raising 
the most delicate and difficult of all work committed to man to the 
dignity of a profession requiring reasonable special preparation. 

3. Adult Illiteracy and Its Elimination. — The limitation of the time, 
however, compels me to content myself with the briefest, statement 
of the first two problems, with which you are already familiar, and 
to devote the remainder of my time to the third problem, with which 
you are less familiar. 

With 12.3 per cent of the total white population over ten years of 
age and 14 per cent of the white voting population unable to read or 
write, according to the last census, the editors of North Carolina will 
agree with the teachers and all other patriotic citizens that the reduc- 
tion and final elimination of illiteracy is one of the first and most 
urgent educational duties — a duty already too long neglected. The 
recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Oklahoma 
Suffrage Amendment case adds new emphasis to this question of adult 
white illiteracy in North Carolina: In the enactment and enforce- 
ment of the compulsory attendance law for children between the 
ages of 8 and 12, conservatively strengthened later, will be found a 
most effective means for the elimination of illiteracy in the rising 
generation and its prevention in future generations. The present 
crop of adult illiterates already beyond the reach of the regular pub- 
lic schools must be reached by some other means. They constitute 
an army of 132,189 native white illiterates, of which 49,710 are native 
white illiterates of voting age, 140 out of every thousand white voters 
unable even to read their ballots — an army marching under the black 
banner of ignorance, a prey to all the ills that follow in the wake of 
ignorance, a menace to all that is best in civilization in a democracy, 
doomed to darkness, inefficiency, intellectual and industrial bondage, 
ambitionless, hopeless, helpless, unless some effective means be found 
and found quickly for their relief and liberation. 

This army of adult illiterates is an inheritance from former gen- 
erations, from slavery, from an aristocratic instead of a democratic 
civilization, from civil war and the devastation, the poverty, and the 
destruction of our school system and institutions that followed. It 
must inevitably handicap the progress of the State, discourage immi- 
gration of the desirable sort, and in the future, as in the past, invite 
the sneers of the scorner and the defamation of the witling to the 
shame and injury of the State for the next two or three generations, 



unless we find and put into immediate operation some effective means 
of reducing, and. if possible, eliminating adult illiteracy during this 
generation. It is our duty to the State and to these illiterates who 
are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and who are not respon- 
sible for their illiteracy, to seek and find a way to reach and teach 
them without further delay. 

These are the tragic facts about white illiteracy in North Carolina. 
Let them speak for themselves — speak to the hearts of men, to the 
love of humanity in men, to the sense of duty in men, to the judg- 
ment and the patriotism of men, to the desire for safety and self- 
preservation in men ! 

By the accident of birth, the fortune of environment, the love of our 
fellow-men, expressed in private and public schools for us, here sit 
we smugly in the light ; yonder at our doors are our brothers, thou- 
sands of them, in the shadow of the world, in the bitterness of dark- 
ness, in the bondage of illiteracy — mature men and women, old men 
and women, but children still — 

"Children crying in the night, 
Children crying for the light, 
And tcith no language out a cry." 

That cry, from the depths of some divine despair, rising from moun- 
tain-top and cove, from plain and valley, ringing in the ears of men, 
ascending to the courts of heaven — shall we not heed it? Duty 
points the way, conscience lights the path. Shall we not go down to 
them, these grown-up children, these lame ones — lame of mind, lame 
of soul, lame, so many of them, from their mother's womb ; lame, 
most of them, because, in the language of one of them, they "hain't 
never had no chance"? Shall we not go down to them, and bid them 
in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, "Rise up and walk"? Shall 
we not take them by the hand and lift them up, that they may gather 
strength to stand alone, to walk alone, to live in the light, to dwell 
in the darkness no more forever? 

Editors of North Carolina, you have it in your power more than 
any others to get these facts before the people, to hammer them into 
their minds and souls until they are aroused to their manifest duty 
to these less fortunate brethren of theirs, to help in the presentation 
and the successful execution of the plans for the elimination of illit- 
eracy in North Carolina. 

I do not need to remind you that you would be great gainers in the 
increased circulation, the appreciation, and the influence of your pa- 
pers from the elimination of illiteracy and the dissemination of intel- 
ligence. I make my appeal on higher grounds to this body of men, 
confident that now, as in the past, they will respond promptly and 
enthusiastically to the high call for the betterment of their fellow- 
men and the honor and safety of their State. 



I do not need to say more, then, than simply in conclusion to outline 
in brief our plan for the elimination of illiteracy and indicate how 
you may help, through your papers, in the successful execution of 
these plans. 

We have now in press for general distribution through the State 
Department of Public Instruction a bulletin of information giving 
the facts about illiteracy in the State and in each county, containing 
short arguments and appeals from the heads of a number of profes- 
sional, civic, social, industrial, and agricultural organizations and 
orders of the State that have pledged their enthusiastic cooperation 
in this work. This bulletin will be used for carrying on the publicity 
campaign for getting the facts before the people and arousing them 
to action. It will, of course, be sent to every newspaper in the State 
first, the contents to be used by the editor as he sees fit, supplemented, 
of course, by editorials from week to week. 

This bulletin will be followed by another that will be a hand-book 
for the teachers and workers. This will contain twelve lessons, three 
a week for four weeks, in reading, writing, and arithmetic for adult 
illiterates, together with suggestions to the teachers. By an amend- 
ment to the school law, 1915, the names of all adults as well as non- 
adult illiterates in each school district are required to be reported in 
the school census of the district. Personal invitations and solicita- 
tion from friends, neighbors, associates in lodges and other organiza- 
tions, and all other tactful means will be used to induce these illit- 
erates to enroll in the "Moonlight Schools," which are simply night 
schools, conducted on moonlight nights, if possible, for the conven- 
ience of the country people in reaching the school. 

These schools will be conducted in the schoolhouse or, if more con- 
venient, in some other place, at least three nights a week for at least 
four weeks. Of course, we shall have to rely mainly upon the public 
school teachers to volunteer for the teaching. Many of them have 
already indicated their willingness to do this. Others will be given 
opportunity to volunteer at summer schools and teachers' institutes 
this summer and later at county teachers' associations. The teachers 
can always be relied upon to do their part in every altruistic move- 
ment for community improvement and civic betterment. This part 
of the work will necessarily be largely under the direction of the 
county superintendent, the teachers, the county board of education 
and committeemen, as it is distinctly educational. 

The "Moonlight Schools" have proved successful in dealing with 
tli is problem of adult illiteracy in other places, notably in Kentucky, 
where they were first inaugurated about three years ago, in Rowan 
County, by Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, at that time superintendent 
of schools of that county. The story of the movement in that State 
under her wonderful leadership is inspiring and the results have 
been marvelous. Largely as the result of the discussion of this sub- 



ject at the annual meeting of the State Association of County Superin- 
tendents, at the Teachers' Assembly last November, eighty-two "Moon- 
light Schools" were conducted in twenty-nine counties in this State 
last year, enrolling sixteen hundred illiterates, of an average age of 
forty-five, most of whom learned to read and write. The forthcoming 
bulletin contains an exact reproduction of a letter written by an adult 
illiterate on the fourth night of his attendance upon one of these 
schools in Columbus County. These schools have, therefore, passed 
beyond the experimental stage. 

Adult illiteracy will be one of the principal subjects emphasized 
this year during "Community Service" week early in October, and 
immediately following that week these "Moonlight Schools" will be 
opened and conducted for at least a month in all parts of the State. 

Local organizations like the Farmers' Union, Junior Order, Women's 
Clubs. School Improvement Leagues, churches, Sunday-schools, etc., 
will be asked to cooperate with teachers and school authorities in se- 
curing attendance, in meeting any necessary incidental expenses, and 
in providing short social entertainments of various sorts to make the 
pupils of these schools feel at home and comfortable and to make it 
pleasant and interesting for them. 

The county papers will be asked to publish in their columns or in 
a little supplement each week's lessons a week in advance. The 
names and post-office addresses of the illiterates enrolled in the 
schools will be furnished the paper, with the request to send a copy 
of the paper containing the week's lessons to each pupil, who will be 
directed to bring it to school with him each night. The paper will 
be his text-book. As he learns to read, he will, of course, have the 
balance of the paper for additional practice in reading. 

Short news items from each district, some of them about happenings 
in these schools, in words and sentences comprehensible to adult be- 
ginners in reading, will be sent to the paper weekly. In this way 
they can be interested and encouraged from the start. If the county 
papers will cooperate with us in this plan, I believe that it will prove 
the most successful plan yet devised for teaching adult illiterates. 

The printing of the lessons and the locals and the extra copies of 
the paper could not cost much. In addition to the sweet reward of 
an approving conscience for a valuable service rendered, the editors 
would, I believe, soon reap a financial rew T ard in advertisement and 
increased subscription list. A very large majority of those to whom 
the paper was sent, as soon as they learned to read, would become 
permanent subscribers and grateful friends to the paper. 

The editors and the teachers of North Carolina occupy the strategic 
position in this plan. Without their voluntary services, involving 
some sacrifices on their part, these plans cannot be successfully car- 
ried out ; this work will fail, thousands of men and women, some of 



6 

whom offered their lives for us in the time that tried men's souls, 
will be doomed to stumble on in darkness to the end of a joyless 
journey. 

I know I can speak for the teachers of North Carolina. They 
never yet have turned a deaf ear to any worthy call of humanity ; 
they never yet have flinched at any reasonable sacrifice demanded 
therefor. They'll do their part ! 

Editors of North Carolina. I've seen your mettle tried before and 
often. I've learned of what fine, sturdy stuff these Tar Heel editors 
are made. I know you'll do your part ! 

All together, then, for the elimination of illiteracy in North Caro- 
lina, for the emancipation of every man, woman and child from its 
tragic limitations ! 



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